It is highly misleading to call this political rigmarole we are now in
the throes of "campaign season." "Season" would imply
that there is some point in the year, indeed some point during any four-year
period, where we don't engage in some national obsession over who is going
to be the next president. Especially for Beltway types, who become bored
with whoever the current president is in about five seconds and spend
the rest of their time yearning for a new one.

So, on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, why don't conservatives seem to
care about the presidency? After all, Paul Weyrich complained that conservatives
were "monarchists at heart" not that long ago, yet conservatives
can't seem to muster enough interest in who is going to be president to
take any substantive steps to insure that it will be one of us.

Texas Gov. George W. Bush, an exemplar of establishment Republicanism,
is far and away the favorite for the GOP presidential nomination. The
only Republican who seems to have any chance of wresting the nomination
away from him is Sen. John McCain, who has become a media darling for
his willingness to stake out liberal positions. Steve Forbes' once-formidable
campaign is stalled, both Alan Keyes and Gary Bauer languish in the single
digits.

For the fourth consecutive presidential election, movement conservatives
have failed to unify around a conservative candidate and nominate him
over an establishment Republican. Perhaps conservatives can be forgiven
for 1992, as George H.W. Bush was the incumbent and the right is divided
over Patrick Buchanan. But there is some explaining to do over 1988, 1996
and 2000.

Why can't movement conservatives beat establishment Republicans? The
answer is simply that conservative candidates aren't getting conservative
votes. Polls clearly show a plurality, if not quite a majority, of conservatives
are backing Gov. Bush. Dan Quayle, Sen. Bob Smith and Rep. John Kasich
dropped out before the first votes were cast (all but Quayle dropped out
prior to the Ames straw poll), Pat Buchanan is now seeking the Reform
Party nomination instead, Jack Kemp and Sen. John Ashcroft didn't even
declare candidacies. But the blame lies not with conservative voters.

The Beltway right is responsible for these dire straits in the presidential
sweepstakes. Conservative pundits resigned themselves early on to the
inevitability of Bush. They generally wrote Quayle off as a loser, made
fun of Smith, smeared Buchanan and decided Kasich was too young and impetuous.
Ashcroft seemed to be the best candidate to unify the various types of
conservatives, but conservative journalists offered him little encouragement.
Conservative intellectuals are busily concocting clever policy schemes
for Bush to hock that he'll probably ignore, conservative operatives are
typing up their resumes so Bush can employ them in the dreaded bureaucracy
when he so "inevitably" wins.

Conservatives were complicit in the nomination of the elder George Bush
in 1988, over conservatives Jack Kemp, Pat Robertson and Pete du Pont.
David Keene of the American Conservative Union supported Bob Dole, as
he would again in 1996. Conservative officeholders touted Bush as the
defender of Reagan's tax cuts, not the former NFL quarterback who drafted
them. Many religious right leaders actually supported Bush over Robertson,
just as Robertson would tacitly support Dole in 1996 and George W. this
year over the likes of Alan Keyes.

In 1996, Beltway conservatives alternately droned on about the inevitability
of Dole, criticized him for not being Ronald Reagan and failed to aid
conservative alternatives. The Weekly Standard (enlisting such notables
as Bill Bennett) ignored the conservatives running against Dole and instead
supported imaginary candidates who weren't even running, self-described
"Rockefeller Republican" Colin Powell and House Speaker Newt
Gingrich, before backing the not especially conservative Lamar Alexander.
After Phil Gramm fizzled out (which was largely his own fault), the right
could have capitalized on Pat Buchanan's upset in New Hampshire or the
less provocative Steve Forbes' wins in Delaware and Arizona. Instead,
Beltway conservatives mainly circled their wagons around Dole in South
Carolina.

This pattern looks like it is going to be repeated in 2000. Conservatives
themselves seem to believe that the only way to win is to back an establishment
Republican or find a carbon copy of Ronald Reagan. We have accepted the
self-defeating proposition that Reagan's victories were anomalous. So
instead of electing a president, or even nominating a conservative candidate,
Beltway conservatives occupy themselves with (a) grudgingly letting Bush
win and then griping about him through the whole campaign, (b) pretending
Bush or even McCain are actually serious conservatives or (c) ignoring
the presidency altogether while conducting nasty civil wars over what
conservatism really is and which people really are conservatives.

Such is the defeatism and triviality of today's conservative movement.
The result will be that many conservative voters will tire of these games
as Pat Buchanan has, and defect with him from the GOP to a party that's
even worse. This will generate much caterwauling from the Beltway right,
especially if the Democrats win the general election. But they will have
no one but themselves to blame.

Antle, a Massachusetts native, is a former researcher for the Rhema
Group, an Ohio-based political consulting firm. This is his first contribution
to Enter Stage Right.